Perennial herb, prostrate and mat-forming to ascending or erect, c. 7-30 cm, much-branched from the base and also above; stem and branches striate, often sulcate, when young usually ± densely furnished with long, white, appressed or lanate hairs, ± glabrescent with age. Leaves narrowly oblong to oblong-elliptic or oblanceolate, c. 1.5-4.5 x 0.5-1.3 cm, obtuse to subacute at the apex, mucronate, narrowed to a poorly demarcated petiole below, the pair of leaves subtending the terminal inflorescence more abruptly narrowed and sessile, oblong or lanceolate-oblong, all leaves glabrous or thinly pilose above, thinly to densely furnished with long whitish hairs on the margins and lower surface. Inflorescences sessile above the uppermost pair of leaflets, at first subglobose and c. 1.25 cm in diameter, finally elongate and cylindrical, c. 4-7 cm long, axis ± lanate above the callus of the flower insertion; bracts deltoid-ovate, 2.5-4 mm, shortly mucronate with the excurrent midrib; bracteoles strongly laterally compressed, navicular, c. 5-6 mm, mucronate with the excurrent midrib, furnished along about the upper one-third of the dorsal surface of the midrib with an irregularly dentate or subentire wing. Tepals c. 4.5-5 mm, narrowly lanceolate, 1-nerved, the outer 3 ± flat, lanate only at the base, nerve thick and greenish below, thinner and excurrent in a short mucro at the tip; inner 2 sigmoid in lateral view at the strongly indurate base, densely lanate almost to the tip, slightly longer. Staminal tube subequalling the perianth, the 5 teeth deeply bilobed, with obtuse lobes subequalling the c. 0.75 mm anthers which are set between them. Style and stigmas together c. 0.75-1 mm, style very short, stigmas divergent. Capsule shortly compressed-pyriform, c. 1.75 mm. Seeds compressed-ovoid, c. 1.5 mm, brown, faintly reticulate, shining.

Type: Brazil, Sellow (K, isotype!).

Distribution: A native of S. America (S. Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina) which has spread rapidly in the present century and is rapidly becoming a widely distributed tropical and subtropical weed. For a note on the species see Sandwith in Kew Bull. 1946:29. 1946. It will almost certainly spread in Pakistan to become much more common than it appears to be at the moment.